


Baby Gate

by ladyknightley



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff, balls, christmassy fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-12
Updated: 2018-12-12
Packaged: 2019-09-17 04:33:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16967754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyknightley/pseuds/ladyknightley
Summary: Rose Granger Wealsey likes baubles. A LOT.





	Baby Gate

**Author's Note:**

> I have an extremely pressing deadline, so naturally I had to write fluffy, festive Romione. This has absolutely no plot, or point, other than I like this time of year and wanted to write something to celebrate. Enjoy!

Hermione dried her hands, looked at the clock and sighed. It _would_ happen that on the one Sunday morning in months that Rose slept in, she herself woke at six thirty. She’d got up to use the bathroom, but was now fully awake and she knew there was no chance of her getting back off to sleep. Ron was still snoring away—but then, in the lead up to Christmas, he was working harder than ever in at Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes, so he deserved a lie in. She decided to go to Rose’s room and wake her, and take her downstairs for breakfast. If she put silencing charms on the upstairs of the house, Ron could sleep in for as long as he needed: an early Christmas present, as he wasn’t due in work today.

She retied her dressing gown, and crept down the hallway to Rose’s room. They always kept her door ajar, with the baby gate locked, overnight. That way, they could push it open to check on her without waking her, but she was safely secure inside. Hermione pushed the door.

And froze.

Rose’s cot was empty. It had clearly been slept in, the sheets were rumpled, but it was completely empty. The sides were still up, and she should not have been able to climb out of them—but even if she had, she’d still be visible in the room. The only possible hiding place was the wardrobe, but that still had its child lock active.

Her daughter was gone.

“Ron? Ron!” she screamed. “ _Ron_!” There was a thud, a crash, and a yowl (the latter probably Crookshanks), but she was already fiddling with the baby gate. Her panic made her fumble, and she couldn’t open it. With a scream of frustration, she pushed against it, trying to shove it aside without unlocking it, but of course that didn’t work.

_Are you a witch or not?_

She pulled her wand from her dressing gown pocket and blasted it to smithereens, stepping into Rose’s room just as Ron came careening around the corner, wearing nothing but his boxers. “What’s going on?” he yelled, point his wand at all corners of the room in turn.

“Rose is missing,” Hermione said, voice shaking. She tore through the bedclothes, although it was patently obvious that she wouldn’t find anyone in the cot.

“Baby gate?!”

“That was me,” she said. “I was awake—in the loo—and then I came in—opened the door—gone—and then—”

“Okay,” Ron said. “Okay okay okay. Think. The cot sides are up?”

“She couldn’t have got out,” Hermione said, near hysteria. “And even if she had, she couldn’t have opened the baby gate. Someone’s taken her!”

“No,” Ron said, shaking his head. “NO.” She didn’t know if he was trying to reassure her, or convince himself. He tore back into the hallway.

“What is it?” she asked, rushing after him.

“ _Homenum Revelio_!” In the half darkness of the early morning, they both saw the glow emanating from downstairs. “She’s down there!” Ron yelled, and the both rushed for the stairs. He fired spells at the baby gates at the top and bottom of the stairs, opening them both, and the one at the door to the living room, which the glow indicated was the room she was in.

Both of them raised their wands as they entered the room, on high alert. Even if Rose wasn’t missing, there was no way she would’ve been able to climb out of her cot, and over four baby gates alone. They were fastidious about keeping them all locked, but even if they had mistakenly overlooked one, to overlook all _four_? And the cot? _And_ for Rose to have defeated the anti-climb charms Hermione had covered all of them with? Impossible.

And yet, there she was, sitting on the rug on the living room floor as though they’d placed her there themselves.

“Mama!” Rose chirruped, clearly delighted to see them. “Dada!”

“Oh, thank God,” Hermione said, collapsing to her knees and clutching hold of her daughter so tightly she started to protest. “Thank you, thank you...”

Ron was still sweeping the room, Auror style. “No sign of forced entry...wards appear to be holding...” He continued muttering to himself, and Hermione checked Rose over. All appeared to be okay—she had no visible signs of injury or illness and she kept asking if it was _playtime, Mummy? Playtime? You have come to play?_

“I’m going to check the doors,” Ron said. “Stay here, it seems safe. If anything happens, floo directly to Harry and Ginny’s with Rose. Tell Harry, Code Yellow. He’ll know what that means.”

She nodded frantically, and he left the room, still on guard mode. Hermione took a deep breath and tried to pull herself together. The important thing was that Rosie was safe. More than that: she seemed delighted to see her mother, and absolutely convinced she had come down early to play with her. “Playtime now, Mummy?” she asked, depositing something in her hand.

Hermione, who was mentally at least fifty percent with Ron, checking the wards on the house, took a moment to focus on it. It turned out to be a single, shiny red bauble.

And _then_ she understood.

* * *

The previous day, they had decorated the Christmas tree.

Rose, who had turned two in early October, was experiencing her third Christmas, but more importantly, she was experiencing her first Christmas where she was really aware of what was going on. Her first Christmas, she’d been too young to do anything but sleep for most of December (halcyon days, her exhausted parents felt now). Last year, she’d been more mobile and responsive, but she hadn’t really got it. After swearing not to be Those Parents, they’d gone rather overboard with the gifts on her birthday, as had the rest of the family, but she’d been interested in nothing but tearing off the wrapping paper, not caring a lick what was inside the gift. So, for Christmas, they’d simply wrapped up nearly everything she already owned, and let her have at it. She’d loved it, so so had they.

This year, though, she understood Christmas. Not just the presents (although she was very excited about what ‘Fatter Kismas’ was going to bring her) but _everything_. Especially, yesterday, the tree.

After quite a few Christmases together now, Ron and Hermione had built up quite a collection of Christmas decorations. Some they kept around for sheer novelty value. There was the angel who looked drunk, the one that bore a striking resemblance to Auntie Muriel which Ron swore gave him nightmares. The Gryffindor bauble. But there were more meaningful ones, too. The miniaturised copy of _Hogwarts: A History_ Ron had got her for their first year together, a tenth of the size of the real book and threaded to hand perfectly on the tree. The miniature Chuddley Cannons player she’d had modelled on him, which he always hung in pride of place. The tiny, sparkling star decoration Hermione had inherited from her Great Grandmother; a wooden snowflake Ron and his father had carved together many years ago. All the accoutrements of a life lived together.

Rose had not cared a fig for any of those. All she had cared about was the box of cheap, shiny baubles Hermione had bought as a job lot a few years ago. Twenty, in red, green, gold and silver: lurid, a bit tacky, and polished enough that you could see your face in them. Special in no other way, they were what had fascinated Rose. To see herself reflected back, but distorted like in a hall of mirrors at the circus—she had been utterly entranced.

“They’re baubles, Rosie,” Hermione had tried to tell her, when they first realised how delighted she was by this phenomenon. “Can you say that? Baubles.”

“Oooh!” said Rose, pointing.

“Baubles. Bau-bles,” said Hermione.

“Balls!” cried Rose. “I balls, Mummy!” Ron had had a coughing fit.

Yesterday afternoon, they’d thought that was the worst of it: Rose, heartily proclaiming that she loved balls. “My balls, Daddy!” she said firmly, when Ron tried to take one off her, gently, to hang it on the tree.

“Just think how much we can embarrass her with this story when she’s thirteen,” Ron said cheerfully.

“Her Patronus must be a magpie,” Hermione added a moment later, after she’d turned her back on Rose for half a millisecond and discovered that she’d managed to remove all five of the lowest hanging baubles. They’d watched her like a hawk for the rest of the afternoon, and placed as many shatterproof charms as they could think of on the decorations, and she’d been quite happy to spend the rest of the day playing with them. The tree itself was surplus to requirements; the twinkling fairy lights and the other, more personal decorations that her parents loved were boring. Even her regular toys were of no interest. The shiny baubles were all she wanted to play with.

Come bedtime, Rose had proven very reluctant to leave them. Not normally prone to temper tantrums, she’d turned stroppy at the prospect of not being allowed to take twenty glass baubles to bed with her, and it had taken them much longer than usual to settle her.

“She’ll dream of her beloved balls all night,” Ron had intoned, when they’d finally got her down. Little did they know she’d do more than that...

* * *

Now, Hermione realised what she would probably have realised instantly, had it not been six thirty on a Sunday morning, and had she not been absolutely panicked by finding her daughter missing. (And, to be fair, she and Ron would decide later, if they hadn’t spent many of their formative years essentially preparing to be attacked at any moment, they might have been slightly less paranoid about Rose being missing, too.)

Rose was sitting among a pile of baubles. Among, in fact, every single shiny bauble that had, yesterday, been on the Christmas tree. And that, though she was still only two, it was not outside of the realms of possibility that she was displaying the signs of some early accidental magic.

“Ron!” she called. “Ron, it’s okay. Come in here, I’ve solved it!”

Ron came tearing back into the living room, clearly still on high alert and having heard nothing other than her shout, because his wand was still raised. He had also at some point clearly realised that he was potentially about to confront an attacker in his own home wearing nothing but a pair of slightly ratty boxer shorts, so had grabbed the first thing he could lay his hands on to all himself more protection. Unfortunately, this was Hermione’s Wizengamot robe which hung by the back door, with their wellies. Slightly too small on Ron, and flapping open, the normally dignified robe gave him the air of Dobby when he hadn’t quite grasped what clothes were for, and she did her very best not to laugh.

“Everything’s okay,” she said again, accepting the bauble Rose was trying to press into her hands. “Look!” She held it up, but he just frowned in confusion. “I promise we’re all safe,” she said, and he finally lowered his wand. “Listen. Rose,” she said clearly, and her daughter turned to look at her. “What did you do this morning?”

“I play with balls, Mummy,” Rose said cheerily. Hermione gestured to the pile, and the tree, bare entirely of the shiny ornaments which had so fascinated their daughter yesterday.

“I know I put at least half of those well, well beyond her reach,” Hermione said as an aside to Ron. “I mean, come on. The tree’s taller than you! There’s no way she could’ve reached them.”

“So you’re saying she summoned them all?” Ron asked, looking impressed.

“Let’s ask her,” Hermione said, flicking her wand at the pile. At once, every single decoration flew back to its previous position. Rose looked surprised. “Rosie, how did you get the baubles?” she asked her daughter. “Did you get them down?”

Rose thought about this for a moment, then pointed at a gold bauble about halfway up the tree. A moment later, it started floating towards her.

“Accidental magic!” Ron crowed. “At _two_! Our daughter is a genius!” he declared. “Hang on,” he said. “I get that she pulled them towards her like that—loads of kids do that with toys or other things they want. Obviously she’s still a total genius—”

“But summoning objects, especially at close range, is not unheard of,” nodded Hermione. “Getting down here, on the other hand...”

“Rosie,” Ron said, crouching down in front of her. “Did you get out of bed this morning when you weren’t supposed to?”

Rose looked wildly guilty. “No!” she protested. Ron raised an eyebrow. “Yes,” she admitted.

“Did you climb out of bed?” She shook her head again. “Did you really not climb?” Ron asked again. “What do we always tell you? It’s important to always, always tell the truth, even about bad things.”

“I’m not bad,” Rose said. “No climbing.”

“How did you get downstairs, then?” Ron asked.

“I thinked,” replied Rose, very firmly.

“Thought, darling,” Hermione said.

“I thinked about the tree,” she said. “And then I was there. BANG.”

“You think she apparated?” Ron asked, looking over at Hermione. “Without splinching herself or anything, just apparated straight down here?”

“I suppose she must have,” Hermione said. “I don’t think she’s lying, and anyway, it doesn’t make sense that she walked down here herself. The baby gates on this room, her bedroom, and the top and bottom of the stairs were all locked, as we’d left them last night. Her cot sides were up, and she can’t reach to undo them. And what about all those anti-climb charms I put over everything?”

“And I guess we’d have heard her—you know she thumps down the stairs all the time,” agreed Ron. “Still. Apparating? At _two_?”

“It’s not unheard of,” Hermione said. “Like you say, most accidental magic is just summoning things. But Harry apparated—or did something close to it—when he still lived with the dreadful Dursleys. Don’t you remember, he told us the story of Dudley chasing him at school, and how he just ended up on the school roof with no idea how he got up there?”

“And we figured he must have apparated up—yes, I think Bill did something similar one time when we were kids. He’d done something bad, and Mum was on the warpath after him, and all of a sudden, poof! He was sat halfway up an apple tree in the back garden. She was so surprised she forgot to tick him off for whatever it was,” Ron said. “But—he was ten. And Harry must’ve been...eight, nine? Rose is _two_.”

“And two months,” Hermione said, gently removing the bauble Rose was trying to shove up her nose.

“She’s a genius,” Ron declared. “I’ve never heard of any child apparating at such a young age. She is a prodigy.”

The prodigy picked up another bauble and tried to shove that up her nose instead. “Hmm,” said Hermione, trying not to laugh.

“Come on, she comes by it honestly,” Ron said, nodding at towards her whilst removing the latest bauble from Rose’s grasp.

“I suppose being a troublemaker is genetic, too,” Hermione said.

“Well, she’s got no chance then,” said Ron. “Gets it from both sides, doesn’t she?” Hermione tried to protest, thought for a second of everything she’d got up to over the years, and decided against it.

“Actually,” she said, laughing. “I think maybe _we’re_ the ones with no chance!”


End file.
